Code Geass: There Is Only War (Redux)
by ChiefRusty
Summary: Lelouch Lamperouge and his closest friends are catapulted from the uncertain, dystopian present into the blood-soaked darkness of the far future.


**Author's Notes: So this is a complete redux of an earlier story of the same name I wrote. Looking on the utter idiocy it was when I first wrote it two years ago, since I'm bored I decided to do an entire remake of the story. More realistic/accurate characters, more faithfulness to the Warhammer 40k setting, and a whole bunch of other stuff. As long as it doesn't sound like a written-out Call of Duty storyline. Anyways, read on if you wish.**

**Chapter 1: A Glimpse of the Coming Nightmare**

_In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, there is only war. Ever since the Immortal Emperor of Mankind ascended to the Golden Throne of Terra, the Imperium of Man for which he sacrificed, renounced, and forfeited more than anyone could imagine has been thrown into chaos. From the Eye of Terror the damned hordes of Chaos pour forth, eager to bring about the death of the Imperium, its weakling Emperor, and indeed, the very existence of the universe. Ork Waaaghs erupt without mercy or pause. The mysterious Eldar strike without warning or reason, and constant rebellions and insurrections threaten the Imperium from within. Despite this never-ending tide of threats to the very survival of mankind, the Imperium is far from defenseless. The Chapters of superhuman Space Marines, the endless legions and mighty war machines of the Imperial Guard, and the feared Inquisition that quells internal heresies with cleansing flame and large-caliber Communion are but a few of the illustrious fighting forces that ensure the survival of the human race through pure faith, superior firepower, and no shortage of honest human courage._

_However, in the days long before the 41st Millennium, the world is still at war. In the year 2017, three superpowers compete for world domination, the mightiest of these: the Holy Britannian Empire. Britannia has taken control of a full third of the globe, and rules its domains with an iron fist. Its colonial subjects, known only now by the numbers assigned to their once proud nations. An area colony is stripped of its freedom, its rights, and its dignity. One of these nations is Japan, now known as Area 11, which surrendered before exhausting its military might. Now, the Japanese freedom fighters known as the Black Knights are led by a mysterious masked man named Zero. Zero, in reality, is an exiled Britannian prince by the name of Lelouch vi Britannia, masquerading as high school slacker Lelouch Lamperouge._

_This is the story of Lelouch Lamperouge and a few of his closest friends, who have been torn from the conflict of today and thrown into the blood-soaked darkness of the far future. Swiftly conscripted into the ranks of the Imperial Guard, they have no hope of returning home; indeed, their prospects of mere survival seem grim. Their only choice: fight their way out, and cling to the hope that every Guardsman clings to: the hope that they may one day settle on a new world, and begin a new life free from the death and destruction that surrounded their previous life._

It was a pleasant dream, a familiar one as well. It was a dream that had nothing to do with killing and death and warfare and constant fear of discovery. It was a dream of the once-idyllic life he had taken for granted while he still had it: the life of a prince. The smells and sounds and sights of the Aeries Villa surrounded him. He could hear the laughter of his brothers and sisters through his ten-year old ears, the sweet beckoning of his mother. He turned towards her and blinked…

…and he stumbled into a pile of oozing, grayish mud, coughing and spitting. As soon as he inhaled the stench, not the stench of flowers and grass but the distinctive stench of cordite and rotting flesh, the coughing and spitting became vomiting. He wiped off his school uniform and stumbled through the knee-deep mud as it flooded his shoes and socks.

The sights matched the smell: piles upon piles of dead bodies. Fallen soldiers were strewn across the fields. Burnt-out houses were host to piles of skulls and body parts. He quickly became aware of the not-so-distant rattling of automatic weapons and the shouts of men. As if in a drug-induced state, he continued shambling towards a group of buildings. Smoke began to pour out of them as the roar of a beast sounded off in the distance. The whistle of artillery shells were followed by deep booms. Yet he still ran in the direction of the fighting.

Men, who he recognized as soldiers, rose up out of the ground, the mud falling off of them as if they were showering. He ran towards them as if his life depended on it. Indeed, he started to believe his life _did_ depend on it. In his stupor, he grabbed the lead soldier by the shoulders. The man looked up, and in the shadow of the man's helmet he saw a skull. The skull's empty eye sockets lit up with a red fire, like a cheesy horror movie, and a bloodcurdling scream in an alien tongue shook him to the core. Regardless of how foreign the language was to him, he knew the words being spoken in an instant.

"_Lulu, wake up!"_

* * *

"Lulu! Oh my god, wake up! Please!"

Long, burnt-orange hair, big, expressive green eyes…_Shirley. Ugh, was I really that out of it that I can't remember a friend's name? This'll be the death of me._

As Lelouch Lamperouge looked around and cleared his throat, he noticed that all of the student council members, minus an entirely absent Nina, were staring intently at him. Come to think of it Milly in particular looked somewhat irked, with a slight chance of mischievousness. As president of the student council, Milly had always been riding Lelouch's ass over his habit of sleeping during meetings. And now, what with living the life of a student and the life of a terrorist at the same time, not even the multiple, consecutive hour-long naps he took during almost all of his classes seemed to be enough. His grades were showing it, too. How Kallen, who Lelouch realized was absent as well, kept her grades as good as they were, he would never know.

_ Oh, well. Not like I ever did shit in class anyways. What's it really worth in the end, especially when I've got more important things to concentrate on? Y'know, like maybe my blind sister and getting rid of those who would try to harm her?_

"Lulu, are you okay? You looked like you were having a nightmare, and then you started choking! I thought you were going to die!"

Lelouch smiled at her. _Typical Shirley, bubbly and concerned about me as always. It's only her, the others and Nunnally keeping me remotely sane right now._

"Should I go get some water or something else to drink-"

Lelouch laughed, cutting her off before she got carried away. "No, thanks. I'm fine." It seemed miraculous, but he was in a pretty good mood for the moment. It seemed as if he'd gotten a decent amount of sleep for the first time in weeks. _That's the wonder of not caring about your studies…maybe you should try it, Kallen. Maybe then you wouldn't always be so cranky and hotheaded._

"Dammit, Lelouch! You need to start paying attention for once, please! I can literally count on the fingers of one hand how many times you've actually done something in here!" Milly started cackling, goofy as ever. "And you _know _what'll happen if I catch you sleeping again!" She emitted yet another giggle as her little idea on punishment ran through her mind again. Lelouch, having known Milly for years, didn't want to know what she had in store.

"C'mon, you can't blame him for not wanting to get anything done. It's not like working on budgets is exciting or anything." Rivalz' support for Lelouch earned him a glare from Milly. She hadn't tried the whole "GUTS!" thing in a while, come to think of it.

"Well, I'm bored. I'm going home."

"Wait a second, Lulu." Shirley looked at Lelouch, almost as if she was pleading. "You know…you've just been awful distant lately. Maybe we should all just hang out together. If you're not too tired, I mean."

"Where at?"

"I'm thinkin' about the mall," said Rivalz. "It's not like we've got anywhere better to go."

Lelouch sighed. Shirley was right: he'd been growing distant from his circle of friends. They'd been there for him all this time, and he'd simply returned the favor by ditching them to fight a war. It was a just and important war to be sure, but everyone needed down time, didn't they?

"Okay. I guess I'll ring up Suzaku at the base, see if he wants to come too."

_Oh well. Not like I've got anything better to do at the moment._

"It's fuckin' cold out here," said Rivalz for the sixth time. They'd been waiting outside the school gates for the past thirty minutes for Suzaku to show up in one of the many buses that zipped by on their routes, and Japanese winters weren't exactly forgiving. Even with a heavy jacket and an insulated pair of jeans on, Lelouch felt like he might die of frostbite. Something told him that Suzaku should have called earlier.

_Dammit. I really do need to catch up on sleep or I'll keep forgetting things like this._

"Hey, guys. I'm gonna run inside the hangar and get my phone." Lelouch felt as if something was off. He'd oddly remembered that he'd dropped his phone inside the Ganymede hangar…but he hadn't been down there in days. It was weird, really.

Shirley skipped up next to him and put her nose to his jacket. "Okay, Lulu. I don't know what you were doing down there, but you better not be smoking in the hangar again." Her expression was dead serious. Honestly, that was the only thing that struck Lelouch as weird about Shirley. Friends didn't try to tell friends how to run their lives. Sure, it was flattering and reassuring that she cared so much about him, but Lelouch had a hard time understanding her.

After a two-minute walk to the hangar, Lelouch flung the maintenance door open, scrambled inside and looked around. Something felt off; it was as if something was compelling him to come inside. His mother's Ganymede was embellished with strange graffiti. There was something else…everything inside seemed to give off a strange aura that made him think of the color purple. And-wait, no, there must have been something funny about one of the mushrooms in that Swiss burger he'd eaten earlier.

He could have sworn he saw a purple glow in the corner-

"_Lulu!"_ said Shirley from outside the door in a singsong voice, "_Better find your phone, Suzaku just got here!"_

Lelouch remained silent; it wasn't as if he was trying to ignore her, but it was as if he couldn't open his mouth. _This must be what if feels like to be on the ass end of a Geass…_He heard Shirley say something else, but it didn't register. Nothing Suzaku or Rivalz said as the three entered the hangar as well seemed to be understandable either. After nearly a minute of silence, Lelouch let out a bloodcurdling cry as he heard a million whispers in a thousand languages he could not identify. They all seemed to say the same thing, though.

_COME WITH US._

A deafening scream emitted from where Lelouch thought he saw the glow, and he suddenly felt as if his soul was being sucked out. That was when he realized the purple light was actually _dissolving_ him. Suddenly, he could concentrate on nothing. Not the panicked screams of his friends, nor the searing pain that coursed through his entire body. The only thing he thought of when he blacked out was his sister Nunnally.

* * *

"NUNNALLY!"

Lelouch jolted awake as an explosion sprayed him with almost colorless mud. He thrashed around on his back as he screamed his sister's name repeatedly. It took him several minutes of gibbering, sobbing and screaming before he could bring himself to think. Even then, his only thoughts were of how he had no clue where he was. He had no clue what had happened to Nunnally, where she was, or if she had a clue what had happened to him. It was at least twenty minutes before he composed himself enough to take in his surroundings. The sounds flowed into his ears. The rattle of machine guns, the staccato pulsing of some sort of high-pitched energy weapon, large-bore guns and the whistle of artillery shells could be heard in the distance. The sound of…whimpering?

Trembling, Lelouch felt something warm beside him. He put his hand to his coat and discovered that it was soaked in blood. Wide eyed, Lelouch looked to his left and saw Shirley sprawled across the ground, mud all over her clothes and in her hair. She was, or rather had been, bleeding profusely from a nasty cut across her cheek. Her eyes were open, darting around, and upon sight of him she rushed to embrace him. She then started babbling, mostly just repeating his name constantly. That was when Lelouch realized that they were laying in a dirt road in the middle of a neighborhood made up of small ramshackle houses. In the distance, he saw skyscrapers emitting smoke. And there were half-rotten bodies strewn everywhere, mostly civilians.

Suddenly, Lelouch heard bootfalls and the rattle of gear. There was someone else here, a group most likely. In all probability they were soldiers of some sort.

"You there! Hands where I can see 'em!"

"Able bodies?"

"Yeah, I think so!"

Lelouch, apathetic at this point, fell to his knees as he felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of his head. "Well, well," a gravelly voice said. "What do we have here? Cultists, maybe?" _What the hell was this man blabbering about?_ Lelouch yelped in surprise while Shirley remained silent as the interlopers tossed them both on their backs. Lelouch then caught his first glimpse of the two men; both of them were haggard and unshaven. One of them, a lanky Britannian-looking man, wore tattered khaki fatigues with body armor and a helmet embellished with a winged skull; the other man, similarly outfitted and built, was bronze-skinned and narrow-eyed like an Oriental man, with a pencil mustache and a soul patch. A cigarette hung from his mouth, and both men carried assault rifles. The latter soldier's armor bore the faded stenciled letters "KANG."

The man named Kang glared at Lelouch, training his rifle on him. "What the hell are you still doing here? The evacuation order went out yesterday!"

_Fuck me, this is definitely a good time to act like a local._

"I…I had trouble getting out, sir." Lelouch tried to comfort a non-responsive Shirley, mainly out of concern for her well-being but also to give the impression that he was just a normal person caught up in all this. "We…we were heading to the evacuation point and the cultists showed up and…" Lelouch pretended to trail off.

The man accompanying Kang looked at Lelouch, then Shirley. "What do you think, Chul-Su?"

"Let's cap their asses and get out of here. I'm getting major creep-out vibes from these two."

"But we can't just shoot civilians."

"Yes, we can. Not sayin' we're gonna do it, but I seriously want to right now. These fuckers can be sneaky sometimes."

"Seriously? Is that all you can think about, shooting people? Ever think about trying to save a few lives?"

Kang scowled at his comrade. "You trust people too much. Maybe you should learn to be suspicious of assholes once in a while, make yourself a bit more secure."

Kang's partner sighed and pulled Lelouch to his feet. Shirley, with nothing to support her, fell trembling to the ground. Lelouch gritted his teeth as Kang motivated her with a couple of kicks and a firm nudge from the barrel of a gun. "You're coming with us," said the soldier attending to Lelouch. "I'm Marlowe, this is Kang."

"Oh, now you tell the cultist my name. Just fuckin' great, I really want to wind up in the Eye of Terror getting raped by demons. Thanks, man."

Marlowe whirled around. "Hey, screw you! Ain't I in charge here?!"

Marlowe stopped, and both soldiers cocked their heads as if listening to an earpiece. "Sir, fireteam two-seven-two-eight reporting in," said Marlowe. "Just found a pair of able bodies. Returning from patrol, over."

Kang frowned. "Okay, jackasses. Looks like you're followin' us home. Pick up the pace."

* * *

"For fuck's sake, they're just kids! Leave 'em alone!" Marlowe screamed at two other soldiers as they trained their weapons on Lelouch and Shirley. Lelouch was still numb with shock; Shirley was simply sitting up against the trench wall, limp with a slew of indescribable emotions. Now these soldiers, on the other hand, were quite animated and were definitely making big decisions about Lelouch and Shirley.

He was inside a trench dug in the middle of what used to be a park. That park was now a pseudo-fortress, bristling with troopers on-edge and ready to kill anything else that moved.

Lelouch had been rather abruptly introduced to Marlowe and Kang. He'd also managed to pick up a few other names; while Kang was out talking to someone in authority, Lelouch had not managed to find out the names of the two men holding himself and Shirley at gunpoint. He'd also caught something about being surrounded by two full regiments of "renegades" and a couple hundred thousand "cultists."

"Don't let them scare you," said Marlowe, looking at Lelouch reassuringly. "They just don't trust outsiders."

"Like fuck, man!" said one of the men training a rifle on Lelouch. "Dumbasses like you n' Kang gettin' these people all up in here, man...wonder you ain't got us killed, man!"

Suddenly, the whistle of an artillery shell came from above, and Lelouch blacked out once more.

* * *

Lelouch jolted awake. It was nighttime, and he was still inside the trench. He looked down and sighed. Shirley was peacefully asleep on Lelouch's shoulder. Blushing slightly and taking care not to disturb her, Lelouch got up, set Shirley against the trench wall and looked around to see several soldiers staring at him. "Get down, dumbass," one of them said. Lelouch recognized the voice as Kang's. "Sarge told me to tell you that you're goin' down in the dugout soon as you come to. Wake up that pretty 'lil girl of yours and get her down their too."

Lelouch nudged Shirley, who groggily awakened. She must have been thinking this was all a dream. "Where's the dugout?"

"Couple meters down that way. Make sure you look hard, it's a bit obscured by some crates n' shit. Keep your head down if you don't want it blown off, much as I'd like to do it myself."

Not bothering to ask Kang what his problem was, Lelouch guided Shirley towards the entrance of a decently-sized, well-lit concrete bunker. Accidently rousing the curses of multiple soldiers along the way, the two stumbled inside and saw two men standing at a table discussing the various machinations of war. One of them, a clean-shaven man with a buzz cut, looked up and saw them.

"So," the man said, "it seems you're not cultists. We managed to convince Lieutenant Hawkins to bring the psyker up here and get you two checked out. Bastard's crazy, but he didn't catch a trace of the warp on either of you."

_The Warp? So I guess that explains the purple light and all…but doesn't that mean Shirley and I would be reeking of whatever he just called it? I guess I'd better not question a good thing, but I should be wary._

The soldier continued on. "Well, I suppose it's time to get down to business. By order of the Provisional Military Government of Arsenault, you are hereby inducted into the 243rd Cappellan regiment of the Imperial Guard. I'm Sergeant Merlin." Lelouch listened as Merlin informed him of the situation. Although Lelouch didn't even know what the name of the city he was in was, he was informed that the 243rd was scattered across the eastern sections of the city. The company he was with was encircled by rebel forces. The big problem was, Lelouch didn't have a clue what these rebels were rebelling against. Could he be getting himself into the army of some oppressive empire? Or was he fighting for a state that worked to spread peace? Where exactly was he? What year was it? Why was he fighting? There were so many questions lingering in his head.

"Lulu."

Lelouch felt Shirley cling to his leg. Looking down, he saw her shivering and crying. "I don't want this, Lulu. I don't want to fight and kill people."

"We don't have a choice," said Merlin, before Lelouch could reassure her himself. "I thought the same thing when I received the draft notice back home. From then on, I learned to realize that fighting is the only chance people like us have of survival. It's also the only chance the people of Arsenault have at survival. Keep in mind that we're fighting to protect them, too."

"Fuck the people of the Asshole!" shouted a soldier outside as Shirley continued to whimper. "I had a wife and kid back home, and I got taken from them just to fight for some jackasses on some planet I never even heard of?"

Lelouch shuddered at the soldier's announcement. He was on a different planet other than Earth? This took things to a whole new what-the-fuck level. It deepened his sadness, too. Whatever had just happened, if they were on a different planet it meant that Nunnally and the others were long dead. Nothing could bring them back. Hysterical as he was, he had to realize that he had to fight for what was left. And what did he have left to fight for? The innocent people of Arsenault, the soldiers with whom he shared a trench, and the carrot-haired girl clinging to his leg: that's what he had to fight for now.

"Sergeant," Lelouch said, a newfound fire in his voice, "I'm ready to fight. I won't let anyone down any more like I have in the past."

Merlin smiled. "I'm glad you see it my way, Guardsman. Let's get you and your friend geared up, then you'd best get some sleep. We've got some rough shit ahead of us."

* * *

"Eat this shit," a short, middle-aged Guardsman admonished as he tossed Lelouch and Shirley a ball of rice each. Lelouch, having had his appetite taken by his removal from his sister, handed his to the trooper next to him while Shirley just stared at hers blankly. "You never know when your next meal will get here. So eat up. Best young kids like you keep themselves healthy. I'm Uncle Kim, by the way."

Lelouch yawned. It was now about noon, according to the sun's position. In the last six hours, he and Shirley had been given two sets of slightly-used fatigues each, a lasgun (which seemed to be some sort of energy rifle) and a set of worn-out combat gear. He'd also figured out a bit more about where they were. He'd been press-ganged into the army of an interstellar human empire called the Imperium of Man, which seemed to be a rather chilling legacy of Britannia. At the moment, though, he had no choice but to fight for it. If he didn't, he had the feeling he'd catch a bullet in the back, something in which he saw no sense. And it wasn't like the cultists and renegades they were pitting him against were remotely worth siding with, either. He'd caught the date on a report lying about in the bunker. 4.21.M40. That could have meant anything, but if his grief-clouded conclusions were correct at all, that meant that he had been catapulted some 38,000 years into the future. _If anyone's reading my mind, you can say "what the fuck" right now. At least I know that Geass'll come in handy. _Very_ handy, but since these people seem especially superstitious I'll have to limit my use of it._

"What's it fuckin' worth, Uncle?" lamented Kang. "We're all gonna die in the name of the glorious motherfuckin' Emperor on Terra, ain't we? Guardsmen don't need to eat, they're just-"

"Another thing," said Kim, cutting Kang off. "That gear you and your girlfriend are wearing is bad luck, so be careful. The guys who used it before were both killed. I sure hope you can break that streak and make it lucky."

_Dammit, she's not my-_

"Shut up, jackass," said another Guardsman, slapping Kim's helmet and turning to Lelouch. "I'm Platte. Don't listen to Kang, he's just been a soldier too damn long. Don't listen to Uncle Kim, either. He thinks he's the best fortune teller in a two-system radius, but he's always wrong. There's this one time told us that we'd find a nice couple of deer for us to shoot and cook up in this one place; we ran into a tank instead. Took us a lot of trouble to bring the damn thing down -"

"Hey, at least we took it out before it smashed into us from the rear," said Kim.

"I can still remember how fuckin' hungry I was that day."

"Save story time for later and finish eating, guys," said Marlowe, whom Lelouch had learned was the assistant squad leader. "Now, I'm sure we're going to welcome our new arrivals with open arms, _right?_" It didn't seem like a question. "As long as we're here on the Asshole, we've got nothing but each other out here. Right, Jenkins? I'm not gonna catch you shooting them in the back like you did the last local who got in with us?"

"Fuck you, man," said Jenkins, a bony, tanned, dour-faced guy in his twenties. "I thought he was a cultist, man."

"And he wasn't."

"Hey, man, can't never be too careful, man."

Marlowe sighed and looked at Shirley, who simply shivered in place. "You've been awful quiet. Been through a lot, I guess?"

She said nothing. Lelouch noted that he would have to keep an eye on her. For some reason, Suzaku crossed his mind. Where was _he_? Wasn't he in the hangar with them when that portal-thingy brought them to this shithole? Where was Rivalz, for that matter?

Another Guardsman lit up a cigarette and yawned. "Best we get through introducing ourselves. I'm Ivanov."

"I'm Bren, but everyone just calls me Brains. It's not my fault they're all a bunch of uneducated yokels."

"Fuck you, Brains. Anyways, I go by Yang."

"I'm Paek."

Marlowe nodded. "Sergeant Merlin's in the dugout, usually. When shit hits the fan, he's always up here with us. Now, shut the fuck up and start watching that rubble out there. Lots of places to hide in a bombed-out city."

Lelouch put his arm around a quivering Shirley. "Are you alright," he asked. Shirley looked up at him imploringly and spoke for the first time in hours.

"Lulu…I…I…"

Lelouch sighed as she went to tears. They'd both had their hearts ripped out of their chests; they'd been torn from their homes and placed…somewhere. Wherever this hellhole was. And Lelouch truly felt for Shirley. He was used to hardship, but she was just a sweet, bubbly teenage girl who had teleported-literally-from her well-padded elements and dropped straight into a warzone.

"Lamperouge, Fenette," Sergeant Merlin said, emerging from the bunker with two small black books. He tossed one to Lelouch and one to Shirley. "Napkins, fapkins, toilet paper, somethin' to read when you're bored. Whatever you can use 'em for."

Lelouch looked at the book. Embossed on the canvas cover in faux gold was a double-headed eagle, under which were the words "Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer." _This might come be useful in finding out more about where I am._

"Everyone shut the fuck up!"

Paek cupped his hand to his ear. "You hear that?"

"That ours?!"

A growing howl, the distinctive howl of gun artillery, seemed to indicate otherwise.

"Shit, fuckin' shit! That's incomin'!"

Lelouch watched as Shirley crawled into a fetal position. Suddenly, the shells hit…and landed nearly fifty meters away from the trenches the Guardsmen were situated in. Shirley, seemingly convinced that there was no longer any danger, propped her rifle against a sandbag and aimed downrange, sucking her breath in loudly and looking for something to shoot. She began to growl animalistically-

"Fuckin' A, get your head down!" Kang shouted as he grabbed Shirley by her combat harness and pulled her into the trench. "Don't get yourself killed yet, young lady. That sort of fighting'll come soon enough. It always does. By the way, you got lucky. If you haven't noticed yet because your ears aren't bursting open, their artillery is way off-target. Of course, if you live through today, you'll get a chance to endure an on-target barrage. That ain't no fun."

"Think they've got Fenris in charge of their artillery today?" inquired Marlowe.

"Yep. The guy's a dumbass. Don't know how he's escaped capture so many times-"

"They'll come in through the street under the right overpass about four minutes after the barrage lifts," said Uncle Kim over the din of off-target explosions. "If I'm getting a good reading, they'll be coming through with a platoon-sized force. Three heavy weapons teams. If we can knock 'em down fast enough, they won't have a chance to shoot."

"Alright, guys," said Platte. "You heard Uncle. Get ready to shoot up at least a full company of these bastards coming in through the highway to the left, so get the heavy bolters ready. They'll come in right after the barrage lifts, but I think they'll only concentrate on one side of our fortifications. It'll make it easier on them to simply concentrate on breaking a smaller part, then exploiting that opening. Make sure we've got plenty of ammo for the autocannons and the lascannon, we're probably going to see some armor with at least a full heavy weapons platoon. Jenkins, get that grenade launcher up and running."

Jenkins slapped a fresh drum into a multiple grenade launcher. Platte muscled a crate of ammunition into place, took out a drum of large cannon rounds and placed it in what was obviously the autocannon. Guardsmen from other squads prepared the other equipment. Within seconds, every one of the soldiers minus Lelouch and Shirley were laying against the trench wall. It took Lelouch a couple seconds to figure out how to work the lasgun, but he managed. Finally, Shirley took her place next to him, looking scared out of her mind. _I'm surprised she hasn't shot herself yet, with the way she's quivering,_ thought Lelouch darkly. He instantly cursed himself for it.

"Lulu…"

"Contact! Foot mobiles! One hundred meters!"

Lelouch saw figures moving in the smoke-filled distance. Men wearing blood-red uniforms went from cover to cover. Just by the way they moved, Lelouch could tell they were ten times more professional than their amateurish uniforms would lead one to believe.

"Where?!"

"Coming from the left and right!"

"Let 'em have it!"

With that, the Guardsmen let all weapons fly on full automatic. Lelouch pulled the lasgun's trigger; the weapon had negligible recoil. Lelouch had never been a particularly good shot, so his first shots went wild, but after the next few bursts of directed energy he was getting close enough to make some of the enemy soldiers put their heads down. He heard shouts coming from the men of the attacking force; despite their disciplined appearance, they sounded rather deranged, gibbering and screaming for blood. One of them, however, looked agonizingly familiar. He didn't know why.

"Heavy weapons team! Left!"

Platte fired a sustained burst from his rifle, and two men carrying an autocannon dropped to the ground. "How many more?! I can't see shit!"

"I think they were the only ones!"

A grenade erupted from the barrel of Jenkins' weapon, and an advancing group of enemy soldiers burst into flames. The thing must have been an incendiary. "Burn, motherfuckers!" shouted Jenkins as the men howled in pain, launching another grenade.

Lelouch's nose crinkled as he smelled burning hair and flesh. One of the renegades leaped up, screaming obscenities and firing blindly at the Imperial lines. His comrades screamed at him, telling him to get down, yet he charged blindly into the gunfire. He heard a loud crack, followed by an agonized scream as one of the renegade's shots connected with a Guardsman. Glancing over, Lelouch noticed that it was Paek.

_I just got here and he's already dead…_

The sounds of fighting suddenly stopped. It had ended but two minutes after it started.

Dozens of bodies littered the streets in front of them. Several were burning, others were missing arms and limbs. There was blood flowing everywhere. Lelouch smelled nothing but spent explosives, blood, rotting and burning flesh and burning hair.

Shirley dropped her rifle and began vomiting all over the side of the trench. Between the fits of retching, she let out loud, gasping, uncontrolled sobs. "I…I…Lulu…I'm a terrible person…I…"

"Get it out of your system, kiddo," said Marlowe, patting her on the back. "First times are never pleasant. It's just natural. Toss it all up."

Shirley continued to cough and cry. _For God's sake, she's just a kid…and it's all my fault she's going through this. Nunnally, if only I hadn't forgotten my phone you'd be able to laugh with her right now. We all would have gone off to the mall and had a good time…I'm sorry, everyone._

Lelouch momentarily contemplated using Geass to toughen her up a bit. It'd work easily. _No…no! That's just wrong. She has to do this of her own accord. God, what am I saying? I'm already forgetting Nunnally and growing complacent!_

"Dad…I said that when I grew up I wanted to be just like you. I wanted to…to…I wanted to be someone caring. I'm…I'm nothing but a killer now."

"Paek! C'mon, man, pull yourself together man! You can't die now! You gotta live, man! What's me an' Sarge and all the others gonna do without you, bro?!" Jenkins embraced his friend's dead body, as if his tears and sorrow would bring him back to life.

"Paek Yong-Man," said Uncle Kim, dry-eyed but contemplatively sorrowful, "What happened to your dreams of going back home and going to school? I thought you were going to go home and marry Hannah? What about raising a family together? Did you forget that? Where did all those dreams and ambitions go?"

Kim retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and began offering one to each member of the squad. Lelouch took two, giving one to Shirley. She kept sobbing and stared blankly.

Kim then produced a lighter. "In honor of Paek Yong-Man. It's what he would have wanted us to do."

Uncle Kim tossed Lelouch a lighter. Looking at it, it was a cheap disposable one. He swore to Shirley, Mr. Ashford and pretty much all of his friends that he'd quit smoking during his sophomore year…_well, it's in honor of the dead. It might not bring them back to life, but it helps the living to cope with the loss that they have to get over._

Lelouch lit up and took a puff. He already knew that it was a long road ahead of him.

**Author's Notes: So…how's that? Reviews or flames are welcome equally.**


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